Chandra Release -- June 24, 2021

Visual Description: Northern Clump 

This release features a series of images of the same system, each focusing on a different wavelength. When blended into a single composite image, a cohesive visual story begins to unfold.

 

An optical and infrared image from the Dark Energy Camera in Chile shows bright white and orange dots of various sizes against a black background. Two of these dots are particularly notable. Near the center of the image is the key to this release; a bright dot surrounded by a bright orange haze. This is the large galaxy in the center of a galaxy cluster known as the "Northern Clump", located about 690 million light years from Earth. Up and to our right from this galaxy is the second notable point; a large white circle with orange optical flares, which resemble the points of a star.

 

In the X-ray image of the same system from the Chandra Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton Observatory, most of the bright dots disappear, including the large white circle at our upper right. What remains in this blue and purple image is the dot in the center: the large galaxy in the Northern Clump. Here, it resembles a white dot encircled by a thin neon purple ring and a faint purple haze. Surrounding the faint purple haze is a larger blue cloud.  

 

The image featuring radio data from the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder telescope features a red v-shape against a black background. It resembles a backwards checkmark drawn with a neon red highlighter. The longer arm of the checkmark angles down from the upper left and stops at the center. The shorter arm extends toward our upper right. This checkmark is a jet of particles from a huge black hole in the large galaxy. At the point where the two red arms of the backwards checkmark meet, in the center of the image, is a white, bean-shaped patch.

 

When all of these images are combined, the aligned focus on the large galaxy in the Northern Cluster becomes clear. In the composite image, the backwards, neon red checkmark cuts down through the blue cloud. It changes direction at the center of the image and angles up toward the large white circle with optical flares at our upper right. In the center of the image, the white dot with the thin neon purple ring -- the Northern Clump -- sits in the middle of the bean-shaped patch, at the crux of the neon red filament.

 

When combined with previous observations and studies, this data is evidence that the Northern Clump galaxy cluster is traveling towards the bottom of the image along an enormous strip of hot gas, similar to how a car moves along the interstate.  This strip of gas is too faint to be shown in these images.